Democracy Road (Myanmar, 2017, 60 minutes)

After more than 20 years in exile in Norway, the Burmese journalists of DVB are returning to their homeland to establish their independent news station there. Editor-in-chief Aye Chan Naing and reporter Than Win Htut have dreamt about this for years, but their struggle for freedom and democracy is not over yet.

Mobilizing working-class transgender hairdressers and beauty queens, the dynamic leaders of the world’s only LGBT political party wage a historic quest to elect a trans woman to the Philippine Congress. Culminating on election day, Out Run provides a unique look into the challenges LGBT people face as they transition into the mainstream and fight for dignity, legitimacy, and acceptance across the globe.

This film explores the life of Vann Molyvann, an architect whose work came to represent a new identity for a country emerging from independence, and whose incredible story encompasses Cambodia’s turbulent journey as a modern nation. In Cambodia’s post-independence period, Molyvann had been at the center of a renaissance, developing a distinctive architectural style, New Khmer Architecture. Returning in the 1990s, Molyvann is marginalized from public life and many of his works are destroyed or neglected.

Sittwe is about two teenagers separated by conflict and segregation in Burma’s Rakhine state, Phyu Phyu Than, a Rohingya girl and Aung San Myint, a Buddhist boy. Filmed over two years, the teenagers share their ideas about each other’s communities and the hope of reconciliation. Sittwe was awarded Best Short Film at its premiere at the Freedom Film Festival 2017 in Malaysia.